Re: Division by zero. Go ahead and laugh.

From: Arturo Magidin (magidin_at_math.berkeley.edu)
Date: 10/08/04 

Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 13:48:10 +0000 (UTC)

In article <drk9d.208256$D%.131430@attbi_s51>, Lefty <Ye@h.Right> wrote:
>
>"Arturo Magidin" <magidin@math.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
>news:ck3kqi$2fdb$1@agate.berkeley.edu...
>> In article <fi39d.318550$mD.87735@attbi_s02>, Lefty <Ye@h.Right> wrote:
>>
>> >The inconsistency which I refer to is division by zero, itself. It has
>been
>> >defined to not exist, out of laziness.
>>
>> Lefty: you don't know what you are talking about. Not here, not about
>> "paradoxes".
>>
>> Simply put: you are talking and making assertions about what "is",
>> based on misinformation, confusion, and ignorance. I do not know if it
>> is simply that you do not want to learn, or that you are too lazy to
>> do so, because even when corrected, and pointed to the accurate facts,
>> you continue to restate your igorance over and over.
>>
>> There is no "laziness" involved in saying that "division by zero" is
>> undefined. The only laziness is in your insistence that repeating the
>> same stupidity over and over is preferable to learning something.
>
>
>You did not even address my assertion, all you did was attack me personally.

Didn't seem worth my time, seeing how you have already been answered,
but ignored the reply in order to repeat your inane and ignorant
assertion. And here you did it yet again.

>Let me just restate something for you and I'm asking you to stick to the
>subject matter.
>
>Here's my claim. You say 1/0 is undefined. I say, 1/0 =
>inconsistency.

You are saying words that do not mean anything.

>You
>do not need to define it out of existence to understand that 1/0 is
>something you dont want to do.

The expression "a/b=c" means one thing, and one thing only: it means
that b*c = a. The reason "1/0" is undefined is that the equation
0*c = 1 has no solutions. Simple. Nothing to do with laziness. Nothing
to do with "things you don't want to do", nothing to do with "defining
out of existence", nothing to do with "inconsistency", nothing to do
with any of the big words you insist on using without knowing what
they mean.

>It does seem peculiar that you'd be picking
>on poor zero, because no other number in all of R gets treated that way.

0 is the additive identity of R. It is the ONLY additive identity of
R. In any ring, the additive identity has the peculiar property that,
multiplied by anything, it yields itself. So in any ring, the equation
0*c = a has no solutions for a different from 0.

In the integers, there are plenty of other divisions that are
undefined: 1/2 is not defined in the integers.

>Got a beef with zero or something ?

No.

>Can you reply to this ?

Of course I can. Are you capable of learning something from the
responses, or are you just interested in making noise by saying stupid
things? 

-- 
======================================================================
"It's not denial. I'm just very selective about
 what I accept as reality."
    --- Calvin ("Calvin and Hobbes")
======================================================================
Arturo Magidin
magidin@math.berkeley.edu

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